by Norris Burroughs

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Monthly Archives: May 2010

One of the most interesting aspects of sequential storytelling is the depiction of the passage of time. This most commonly takes place with the progression of panels, but also can function in the compositional structure of an individual panel. In his excellent article “That Old Jack Magic,” first published in Amazing Heroes 100 (1986) and now offered on the Kirby Museum website, Kirby scholar and biographer, Greg Theakston draws attention to a compositional tool that Kirby used to great effect. Theakston refers to it as the Big O, because its function is to lock our eyes into a circular pattern moving around the page. In showing an example of this, allow me to start with this obvious choice, a splash panel from Fighting American #4